What is Sun Bleaching and How to Use It to Your Advantage

In this article, we take a look at what Sun Bleaching is and some of the different ways that you can take advantage of it.

Simply put, when you put something outside and it is exposed to natural sunlight, the colours of the object will begin to fade. This is known as “Sun Bleaching”. To make things more complicated, when the colour of an object fades because it is exposed to natural sunlight, this is known as “Photodegradation”.

When Photodegradation is in place, the UV rays which are emitted from the sun cause their own chemical reaction. This results in Sun Bleaching to take place.

Let’s take your hair for example. More specifically, the colour of your hair. Because your hair colour is a part of your DNA, there is a molecular structure in your hair strands which defines your hair colour. When UV light is reflected onto your hair, these structures are opened up and become vulnerable to change.

To dig even deeper, once the UV rays have opened up these molecular structures, the UV rays will begin to cause the hair colour to fade lighter and thus, will begin “Sun Bleaching” your hair.

On the light spectrum, sunlight is white. Once your hair molecules are unable to continue absorbing natural sunlight, they aren’t able to select particular wavelengths. Following this, when there is no absorption of specific wavelengths, your hair will slowly become the same colour that the sun is; white. Going back to our simpler explanation, when sun bleaching takes place in an object (or in this case, your hair), the object will lose its original colours and will appear as white.

Once sunlight is absorbed into your hair molecules, the molecules are then broken down and the protein which takes care of your hair colour is lost; thus, causing your hair to turn lighter colours.

Another way to look at sun bleaching is to consider it as the process which turns a coloured object into a white object through natural sources, rather than with chemicals.

How to Take Advantage of Sun Bleaching

Below we have put together a detailed list of some of the best ways to take advantage of Sun Bleaching.

Use Sun Bleaching to Getting Your Hair Ready for Summer

Sun bleaching hair – making it blonder

While you are out enjoying the blazing hot rays of sunshine, the melanin which is in your hair is slowly being killed off and because of that, your hair quickly becomes softer. If you’re thinking about getting your hair dyed blond or another light colour, then this could be a god-sent and could save you a lot of money.

Rather than using expensive hair products or paying a hairdresser to get the job done for you, you can take advantage of Sun Bleach.

To do this, you start by spraying your hair with a bottle of water which has been mixed with “crystal of salt”. This will assist your hair cuticles to open up and let the sun reflect into it. After about an hour, wash your hair thoroughly with shampoo and towel dry your hair. Wait until your hair air dries relatively dry, and move onto the next step.

Next, you must mix lemon juice with water (at a ratio of 2 units of lemon juice to 1 unit of water), and spray it onto your hair. A good tip here is that if you’re looking to sun bleach all of your hair, gently massage the juice into your scalp and the roots of your hair.

Once the lemon juice is in your hair and ready to go, blow dry it until it is completely dry and stay in the sun for a further 30 minutes. You can do this twice a week for as long as you need until you reach the level of bleached hair that you want. Rather than bleach your hair with harmful products, why not use this natural method?

This is one of the most effective ways to remove stains from your clothes which just won’t budge. If you’re someone who spends their money on nice looking clothes, which we all know aren’t cheap, then you a stain can be upsetting and when it comes to removing the stain, the last thing you want to do us cover your clothes with chemicals. Not only can these chemicals cause the stain to worsen, but it’s rare to find cleaning chemicals which are environmentally friendly.

Similar to how you Sun Bleach hair, the process to remove stains from your clothes is somewhat similar. Start by washing the stained clothing as you usually would and instead of putting the wet clothes into your dryer, hang them out in the sun. For the best results, make sure that your clothes are spread out as much as possible so that the sun can cover as much of them as possible. If you are specifically trying to get rid of the stain, then as long as it is exposed to the sun then you’ll achieve optimal results.

Once your clothes are hung out to dry, put together a lemon juice solution (2 units of lemon juice to 1 unit of water, as we done before), and spray it on the stained area. By doing this, the lemon juice will lighten the affected area and because of that, the stain will be removed too.

It’s important that unless the clothing which you are using this method on is white, that you don’t leave it out in the sun for more than a few hours. If you do, you may see the affected area being lighter than you wanted it to be. If you don’t achieve the results that you wanted, don’t worry. It can take a few attempts for this to work so just repeat it once or twice throughout the week!

To Conclude…

From the beginning of time, people have used sun bleach as a way to make their clothes lighter and even dye their hair. Using Sun Bleach to do both of these things is not only completely safe, but it’s incredibly cheap and can be a fun experiment too. This natural, and therefore environmentally friendly, the method will get the same job done that some expensive products out there will do.

One of the most common methods of sun bleaching is to hold off for a sunny day, spray lemon juice into your hair, and lay in the sun. By doing this you are able to make your hair a lighter color without having to pay the expensive costs of a hairdresser. On the other hand, there are people who also use sun bleaching to make their clothes lighter colours; another task which can be made expensive with branded products.

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